"In 1976 the BBC ran a television series called House Of The Future. Though many of the details have flown my memory, I can still remember the half-hour instalments of every Sunday noontide as a team of builders and engineers built a house with cavity walls, solar panels on the roof and water-saving devices inside and out. Curiously, there wasn’t anything futuristic about the building itself; no rooftop helipads or space rocket landing areas. The series creators deliberately avoided architectural clichés and refused to pander to images from science fiction. This was a generic house that any family, anywhere, could build and live in. No doubt the energy-saving devices were a response to the four-fold increase in oil prices in the mid-1970s and the idea of saving water followed in the wake of the drought of 1976, but it matters not. The idea that the house of the future would not be the energy-hungry beast we had all become acquainted with, was born. Three decades on, this idea has come to fruition, albeit somewhat belatedly. Everywhere; governments, private companies, public authorities and individuals have taken on board that all new houses must be built with water and energy-saving devices, as a matter of course. It is even possible to add these devices to older buildings."
I published the book a decade ago, so it is now four decades from the screening of House of the Future. And the lessons learned are all the more resonant today. Isn't it time that governments, big buisnesses and power brokers everywhere, copped on? I rest my case.
Posts
